View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoNEAL C. LAURON | DispatchOhio State football coach Urban Meyer and his wife, Shelley, will receive stipends. Meyer’s contract was the first sign of the change.

The Ohio State athletic department is in the final stages of eliminating a decades-old courtesy-car program for its head coaches and some other department personnel in favor of a program that awards a monthly stipend of $600 to each of the employees affected.

In the wake of a nearly yearlong NCAA investigation that resulted in major sanctions against its football program and brought scrutiny on how the athletic department operates, athletic director Gene Smith said it was time to do away with the concept of courtesy cars.

The total cost to the university to provide the stipends is estimated at $612,000 annually. They will go to coaches and others in the athletic department who have annual salaries ranging from $55,000 (pistol coach Jim Sweeney) to $4 million-plus (new football coach Urban Meyer).

Smith stressed that the program had not run afoul of NCAA regulations. But the time seemed right, he said, to discontinue any programs that might hint of impropriety.

“As we looked at it, we felt the optics weren’t appropriate,” Smith said, referring to public perception of the program. Among those who will be switched to a stipend is the head of compliance for the department, Doug Archie.

OSU’s courtesy-cars system had evolved from piecemeal deals between football and basketball coaches and auto dealers in the 1970s to an in-house program reined in by then-athletic director Rick Bay in the mid-1980s to benefit all sports.

In recent years, as many as 65 Ohio auto dealers provided courtesy cars to 80 to 85 members of OSU’s athletic department: head coaches of all 36 varsity sports; select assistants and support personnel; and upper-level athletic-department administrators.

At the same time that officials were receiving free vehicles, internal auditors were warning the athletic department to keep a closer eye on where and how athletes were getting autos to avoid violating NCAA rules that prohibit gifts or special favors for athletes.

In November, the auditors found dozens of football players driving vehicles that were not registered with the athletic compliance office, as required. They documented similar problems in 2006.

The switch to stipends for coaches and others in the athletic department comes as OSU is revamping its compliance system in the wake of the NCAA violations and sanctions involving the football program.

The stipends will add substantially to the athletic department’s annual budget, according to Ben Jay, OSU’s senior associate athletic director for finance. Each person afforded a vehicle in the past will receive a taxable stipend of $600 per month, which can be used for a purchase or lease. Jay is working on a budget for the coming fiscal year that figures on about 85 such stipends, at the $612,000 annual cost.

The first sign that Ohio State was changing its policy came when the university revealed details of Meyer’s contract on Nov. 28. Entry No. 6 among his income sources was a notation that he would receive $1,200 per month to cover the cost of autos for him and his wife, Shelley. (Three other prominent members of OSU’s athletic department also will receive stipends for their wives: Smith, men’s basketball coach Thad Matta and women’s basketball coach Jim Foster.)

Ohio State is moving toward a similar stipend program university-wide, Jay said; the athletic department is the first to implement one.

Smith said the decision was made late in the year, with Meyer’s contract serving as the first public inkling.

“We learned something in looking at the situation,” Smith said. “We thought about it, and we felt this was the perfect time to do it.”

The benefit of such a change is that it removes the appearance of a cozy relationship between the university and auto dealers, whose past participation in the program earned two free season tickets to OSU home football games, plus the right to buy two more.

Dealers will retain their season-ticket privileges for this fall’s football season, “because we felt that was the right thing to do for them,” said Denny Hoobler, an OSU associate athletic director who had been in charge of the program.

After the 2012 season, “they will have to either join the Buckeye Club (at a minimum of $2,500) or take part in other programs like a normal donor to qualify to buy tickets,” Hoobler said. “That should help defray a lot of the cost of the new program.”

Columbus auto dealer Steve Germain, whose family has been involved in the courtesy-cars program for decades, said he expects that his dealerships will remain involved.

“We will continue to support the university because it’s the right thing to do, not only for our business, but also for the community,” Germain said.

Germain lauded the way Bay took control of the program in the mid-1980s and opened it to all sports, making sure that the dealers also bought tickets as part of their involvement.

“Now, they took it farther and said it doesn’t make sense to let the public have the perception something is going on that is not absolutely aboveboard,” Germain said. “But it has been aboveboard for a long time.”

Almost every person affected in the OSU athletic department has made the switch, except for Matta and the four eligible members of his staff; for them, the change came in midseason.

Foster has made the move, buying a Hyundai Genesis for himself and a Subaru Outback for his wife. Although he had enjoyed courtesy-car programs at his previous college head-coaching stops, St. Joseph’s and Vanderbilt, he didn’t grumble about the change, even though it could be considered an unfair consequence of public perception.